As we bask in the warm glow of the success of the North Shropshire by-election, let us not forget the Labour attempt to stop us winning (and to help the tory). It seemed to be mostly the local party (Starmer stayed away) but do they have control of the national facebook account?
There seemed to be some sort of informal pact in place:
Lib Dems and Labour should only target seats they can win, says Ed Davey
but this seems to break down as we approached the final 10 days as Labour put out a ridiculous "internal poll" which showed us on 11%!
LabourList: Tory lead in North Shropshire narrowed to seven points, internal polling suggests
They were now running a campaign, here is a wraparound on the local paper:
Then emails asking for help to Labour activists went out and phone banks were set up telling people we were in third.
Here is the facebook ad the main Labour account was running:
Amzingly this matched the message the Tories were putting out. Can't think why!
And here is one of the leaflets they were putting out saying not to believe our "fibs":
Then there was the shadow cabinet support:
(Someone thought it might just be someone from her office but she confirmed it was her)
And visits from MPs Angela Raynor, Preet Kaur Gill and Lucy Powell.
An honourable mention for the Greens:
It's important to remember that a lot of Labour (& Green) voters themselves ignored this and made up their mind to vote tactically for which I am very grateful but we shouldn't forget that not everyone in the party was on board and what they put out and said about us!
Tiverton update, they seem to be doing better this time but still:
https://twitter.com/BenPBradshaw/status/1535661152591613953
